He isn't a pessimist. A good doctor doesn't cure a patient by pretending something isn't wrong.
Nothing you've quoted mentions the real problem: believing agnosticism. There are 45 metric tons of deism for every ounce of faith: the legacy of Kant.
Human rights, due process and the aspiration for justice are NOT opposed to the liturgy. The Passion narratives deplore the lack of due process and hunger and thirst for justice is a major Beatitude. The Law, the Prophets and the Gospels leave no doubt that the cause of justice is God's own cause.
The renewal of the liturgy will come not from hunkering down in a medieval bunker but by opening up to the BIBLICAL roots of the liturgy and by reforming it so that it communicates the full impact of the Paschal Mystery in contemporary conditions. That will involve a far closer integration of our celebration with social justice issues. Benedict XVI calls for that in Deus Caritas Est but the recent Synod was sorely deficient on this point. Unless we think the Eucharis from its Jewish and Christic roots, with theological courage, the present crisis or anemia of our eucharistic life will continue indefinitely.
The "anemia" is caused by a hemorrhage whose name is "Mass of 1969". It is a liturgy of an essentially anthropocentric nature, and it shall always be.
Chris, I agree that a good doctor doesn't pretend something isn't wrong. I think Warren calls him a "pessimist," not in view of any lack of an apt prescription, but in view of any prospect of a quick and easy prognosis.
Kathy, I think you are so much more right than most people would imagine. Whether directly or indirectly, Kant has done so much to shape our modern and postmodern schitzophrenia towards Truth. Like liberal Protestants, liberal Catholics keep wanting to bifurcate their references into realms of phenomena and noumena, fact and value, history and faith -- a Kantian legacy of untold damage and all based on a false premise (for values, too, may be facts, as facts are values).
"Spirit," if there was any defeciency in the recent Synod, it was the consideration of the Eucharist in isolation from the liturgy and a collective refusal to acknowledge that the "liturgical renewal" since Vatican II has been an utter disaster. Nobody in his right mind would see genuine aspirations for justice and human rights as "opposed to the liturgy," but it remains another question what you mean by "justice" and "human rights." If your previous advocacy in behalf of religious dissent, abortion rights, and sexually active gay and lesbian partnerships is any indication, one would do well to ask whether vice and sin can justly be considered human rights. Your call to open up to the BIBLICAL roots of liturgy sound a formally positive note, but with all the concomitant hazards of biblicistic Protestantism, wherein the "BIBLE" can be twisted, like a wax nose, to speak to whatever pet agendae you may be entertaining by way of ulterior animus. We love you, but we don't trust you.
New Catholic, I'm afraid you are right. I do not for a moment doubt the complete validity and licitness of the Pauline Mass of 1969. However, even with all the things recognized by Rome as abuses corrected, it remains a deeply flawed Mass, nowhere near resembling what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council mandated or envisioned.
Thanks, Dr. Blosser.
But I would also add that IMHO Kant unwittingly popularized Hume's framework, in an effort to correct it (making room for God, freedom and immortality.) So it's Hume's agnosticism, and vast immoral framework, at the root of it all.
Spirit, a Benedictine monk I know studied at San Anselmo during the 60s. He said that the post-conciliar documents "corrected" the conciliar documents. For example, he said, Sacrosanctum Convivium never mentioned justice, but the post-conciliar documents did. But honestly, I don't think anybody cares about the post-conciliar documents anymore. When I consider Vatican II, I look at the documents. Not the hoopla, not the "history" (i.e. the gossip about what Cardinal said what to whom), not the fallout, but the documents.
By the way, Spirit, I might be more inclined to read your website if it were more chatty. Essays?
The preconciliar approach to liturgy was influenced by the Enlightenment much more than many people suspect. Rather than appeal to a strain of Aristotelianism sieved through Aquinas and Kant, Spirit is on to something better: reclaiming our roots in Judaism and the early Christian witnesses.
If the Eucharist is large anemic in practice, many of us would say that Vatican II reforms were simply not taken with the gravity needed by the clergy and other leadership.
The so-called reform of the reform approach amounts to putting together a casserole (Sacrosanctum Concilium) putting in an unheated oven (turning it over to a largely ill-educated pre-conciliar clergy) and five minutes after maybe remembering to set the oven at 400, pronouncing, "The meal's not done; let's check the fridge for last night's leftovers
Todd, I agree with nearly everything you say, except this: "Spirit is on to something better: reclaiming our roots in Judaism and the early Christian witnesses."
First, as Pius XII pointed out in his Medator Dei, "an ancient custom is not to be considered better, either in itself or in relation to later times and circumstances, just because it has the flavor of antiquity." Again: "The desire to restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition is neither wise nor praiseworthy. It would be wrong, for example, to want the altar restored to its ancient form of table; to want black eliminated from liturgical colors, and pictures and statues eliminated from our churches, to require cruicifixes that do not represent the bitter sufferings of the divine Redeemer; to condemn polyphonic chants .... See that your flocks are not deceived ... by a mania for restoring primitive usages in the liturgy."
Second, the "Back to the Future" mantra is used by dissidents to hijack Catholicism for their own tendentious purposes, much as Catholic Bible scholars use the "Let's Get Biblical" mantra to hijack Catholicism to their own Alternate Magisterium of modernist and post-modern opinion. "Spirit" (a.k.a. Fr. O'Leary) is a dissident. The rest should be clear.
"Human rights, due process and the aspiration for justice are NOT opposed to the liturgy."
Are those things really the essence and central emphases of the Endarkenment?
When I talk of biblical roots of course I am not referring to ritual details of the Jewish passover. I am talking about the MEANING of the Eucharist. I think the real problem today is that most Catholics are not clear on what the meaning is. This was seen in the gravitation of the bishops at the recent Synod to the word "transubstantiation" and their inability to clarify in any wider way the sense of Christ's presence in the power of the Paschal Mystery in the Eucharist.
Spirit, the "clarifications" I've been subjected to of the "wider" meaning of the Eucharist usually attack any theological justification of the adoration of the Eucharist outside Mass.
What is the point, exactly? Why do violence to other peoples' (correct) belief? Do you subscribe to that obviously empirically disproven idea that people must have their inherited structures of faith undermined, in order that they can be built up more authentically? I hope not, because that's fallacious. What usually happens is people in our day a) don't have much basic catechesis that even CAN be deconstructed, and b) they become cynical about even the idea of faith.
It is the faith of the childlike that Jesus commends, not this o-so-sophisticated Jesuit nonsense.
On the specific issue, Pope Paul VI saw the iconoclasm coming, which is why he wrote Mysterium Fidei.
I do not know of any Catholic theologian who attacks adoration of the Eucharist outside Mass. But since the time of Pius XII the Church has insisted strongly on the subordination of the reserved sacrament to the Eucharistic event -- its primary purpose is as viaticum for the sick (an obvious extension of the eucharistic meal).
Could you please provide citations in Magisterial documents for this "subordination?"
Because the problem with your "subordination" theory is that the Blessed Sacrament is the very presence of the living God. It cannot be reduced to a "purpose." As any Catholic theologian knows, God's "purpose" is God.
If you haven't read attacks on adoration of the Eucharist outside Mass, you should catch up on your reading.
Has Father O'Leary accidentally identified the cause of the vocations crisis? the "Eucharist event" (not the Mass, mind you) has taken the place of worship! Voila. No more awareness of the sacrifice, no more priesthood.
Chris
By the way, here's a really edifying talk given by my hero Cardinal Dulles: http://www.fordham.edu/media/
dul...ealPresence.ram
That's hi-speed. Modem speed: http://www.fordham.edu/media/
dul...lPresenceLR.ram
By way of http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/
...les_online.html
Viaticum is the primary purpose of reserving the sacrament, Adoration is one of the secondary purposes. The Vatican document that says this is here: http://www.fargodiocese.org/
Educ...tsideOfMass.pdf
Here is the 1967 document Eucharisticum Mysterium http://www.adoremus.org/
eucharis...mmysterium.html
Note par. 49 of Eucharisticum Mysterium, which quotes a text from the time of Pius XII (see note 10
.
note 108
I think a lot depends on the meaning of "primary and original."
Primary often simply means first. But of course that would be redundant with "original."
Care to scout out the Latin "original?"
In the meantime, I would just point out that the thrust of the document is that the Eucharist should definitely be adored outside Mass: reserved with the highest dignity and made available to the people for adoration.
I live to serve, Ms Ploodilly-Doodily-Ooth.
Hello. Some people might be interested in reading this:
"The Nature of Liturgy
http://canonsregular.com/the_liturgy.htm
By the Very Rev. Dom Daniel Augustine Oppenheimer, CRNJ, Prior".
==
BTW Christopher, nice to see your Angelus in the CNP catalog!!
Goodness me! News travels fast. Thank you for noticing. I wrote it for a simple choir of volunteers so that we might have something marian to sing on Christmas Eve. I'm humbled by CNP's willingness to publish it.
Chris
Just got the catalog in the mail the other day and recognized your name. Congratulations!
Commenting by HaloScan
